Poll

Outdoors

I know you can ‘burn out’ the barrel of a rifle by shooting a substantial number of hot loads through it. But, I wonder if it’s possible to do the same thing by cleaning it too much.
The reason I ask is that all I’ve been able to do with my predator rifles for the last couple of weeks is clean them. Not from shooting them a lot, but out of sheer boredom! Right now I’d put my guns up against one just coming off some companies assembly benches!

Feb. 1 rolled around and a few days later we tried our luck at night hunting coyotes. I had everything I needed: guns, lights and calls.We had a rifle for longer shots, anything over 40 to 50 yards, and a 12 gauge with No. 4 buckshot for everything else.
It was textbook! We’d eased into our area and parked a distance away from our location. We eased into where we had cover and could see as well as the full moon would allow. It’s amazing how good you can actually see when your eyes adjust to the darkness.

We got our wish! There are finally some decent numbers of waterfowl, mostly geese, in our area. And for the past week, the water hasn’t been frozen, at least not frozen solid.
That means we’ve been able to squeeze in some last minute waterfowl hunting. Of course that ended for ducks on Sunday, Jan. 25.
And all those geese? Well, that season ends on Saturday, Jan. 31.
So, where did our 60-day season go? It was just a couple of weeks ago that I wrote about the season opener coming up.

I received a call from Stephen at the Enterprise office, and my first thought was “What did I mess up?”
When he got on the phone, I was told this was one of the early deadline weeks (office was closed Monday).
“I knew that, but thanks for calling” was my response. That’s what I said. What I thought was, oh crap, forgot all about that!
So, here I sit, five days after turning in my last column, wondering what to write about.

It’s been cold, real cold! When it’s this cold the inclination is to hunker down and avoid “being out in it” as much as possible.
You know who complains the most? Not those who have to be out in it for extended time. It’s those whose exposure is limited to that distance between their vehicle and a building. This is usually around 50 yards and three minutes of “exposure time.”

Finally, after scouting for days, heck weeks, I found a field that a small flock of Canada geese were using (feeding in). One field, one flock. That's it!
Anyway, Tate, my 11-year-old grandson, was coming over from Adair County, and we figured on giving the geese a try. I'd previously tweaked his interest by having him "watch" the geese, so he was hyped at an opportunity to shoot one.